There are recurrent interruptions and pauses in the action.

• The Ghost interrupted by the crow of the cock
• Marriage of Gertrude to King Hamlet interrupted by the king's death
• Play within play interrupted by the king's sudden departure.
• King worries that sending Hamlet away will be viewed as a "deliberate pause." IV.iii.7
• The fencing game between Hamlet and Laertes interrupted by the mimicked object of the game-- death.
• Hamlet's procrastination interrupting his commission to avenge his father's death.

The lack of linearity not only characterizes the structure of the play but the characters themselves. Hamlet's madness is, at least superficially, wildly non-linear.  Guildenstern chides him to put his discourse into some frame . . . ." III.ii.315-316. On the other hand, Hamlet himself declares that there his behavior has an orderly direction, and that his indirection is itself part of a larger direction:  "I am but mad north-northwest. When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.  II.ii.387-388.  

This leads to the possibility that the play really is linear after all.

Hamlet is non-linear, and in its non-linearity constructs neutrality in a way that Pilgrim's Progress does not.  

 So what does this mean?